Ariana Grande speaks her mind
Young singer Ariana speaks out, strikes a chord with feminist tweet
As established, “Are you a feminist?” is a dicey question no celebrity really wants to answer: It’s a no-win situation, since stars get criticized either way. (Remember what happened when Emma Watson said she was a feminist? And when Kaley Cuoco said she wasn’t?)
For pop star Ariana Grande, however, publishing a long, feminist Twitter post was a very wise career move.
Apparently frustrated that people are too interested in her breakup with rapper Big Sean and rumoured dalliance with One Direction’s Niall Horan, Grande posted a long message last Sunday that blasts people for caring only about her relationships.
“I am tired of living in a world where women are mostly referred to as a man’s past, present or future PROPERTY/POSSESSION,” she wrote, sparked by a British tabloid story that quotes her as saying she’s neither Big Sean’s ex nor Niall Horan’s girlfriend.
“I … do not. belong. to anyone. but myself. and neither do you.”
Grande, 21, went on to name-check feminist author Gloria Steinem and point out the well-known double standard. “If a woman has a lot of sex … she’s a ‘slut.’ If a man has sex … HE’S. A. STUD. A BOSSSSSS. a KING.”
She continued: “I know y’all already know this but the double standard and misogyny are still ever present … I want the people reading this to know they are MORE THAN enough on their own.”
The pop star wrote that she comes from “a long bloodline of female activists,” notably her aunt Judy Grande, the late Pulitzer Prize finalist who served as president of the National Press Club in 1990.
“I think she would have been proud of me for speaking up about something that has been bothering me personally for so long,” Grande wrote.
And that, essentially, is why this is a great move for Grande’s public image: The “speaking up” part will make waves and, more important, earn her respect for having the courage to say anything at all.
Celebrities avoid hot-button topics as much as they can these days, so it’s unusual for anyone to take a stand. Grande has already made lots of headlines for her Twitter post, given that it’s a simple, rare act of having an opinion.
It makes sense: Celebrities are frequently taken down on social media for the audacity of having thoughts about various topics. Who wants to go through that, no matter what the issue? Even Alisters are only human.
But when stars come equipped with a whole list of subjects they will not talk about, they risk alienating themselves (and becoming quite boring.) The best thing celebrities can do to endear themselves to fans is to get personal. If they come off as robots without a personality or original thought, that’s a very quick way to slide into irrelevance.
Grande herself is known to have some very strict rules for what journalists can ask — a list of banned interview questions made the rounds last year, from her ex-boyfriends to her cancelled TV show Sam & Cat. Around the same time, there was a glut of stories about examples all over the Internet of Grande’s “diva” behaviour.
Now, months later, Grande is fixing her image as she takes control of the narrative: She’s addressing a formerly banned topic head on, and tying it to a very timely issue of feminism among celebrities.
Grande knows the tabloids will never stop writing about her relationships. But you can bet they’ll go back and quote her Twitter post for quite awhile, which automatically gives her some power over the story. That alone shows she’s savvy enough to be aware of the inner workings of the Hollywood media machine.
Not only that, but in her post, she slyly included a plug to her Honeymoon Diaries, her behind-the-scenes YouTube series as she travels the globe on her world tour. That’s some top-notch celebrity PR work.
Another very high-profile star who can appreciate that? The same one who tweeted her approval of Grande’s tweet, resulting in another round of headlines — Taylor Swift:
“@ArianaGrande I’m so proud of you, always. But especially today,” Swift tweeted.
Wel l played, Ariana Grande.